Setting Personal Boundaries

A personal space is a space where you hide your own weaknesses, strengths, pain, past, fear, etc. and a boundary is your personal space where you decide, who you want to be, what company you want to be in, what are your motives in life and who are important to you. When you set priorities for each and every person in your life it is the time when you set your personal boundaries. These boundaries show the limits regarding how others can treat or behave around you. Setting boundaries will ensure your protection against emotional and mental exploitation. Healthy boundaries are those that are impartial and reasonable and suitable for one's age and maturity. You can say yes or no without guilt, feel angry or fearful. You can refuse to tolerate abuse or disrespect. Thus, make yourself a unique personality.

Some signs of unhealthy boundaries

1. Talking to someone unknown at an intimate level. 

2. Letting others control your life. 

3. Unreasonably, intentionally hurting someone. 

4. Tolerating false and vulgar remarks. 

5. Letting others set boundaries for you. 

6. Doing something against your family morals, personal values and rights. 

7. Letting others take undue advantage of you. 

8. Tolerating mockery made out of you constantly. 

9. Passing comments without knowing the person's situation and his/her hardships. 

10. Violating other's boundaries.

Tips for setting boundaries

For setting healthy boundaries we need to keep certain things in mind. Due to fear of rejection and loneliness, you hesitate in expressing your feelings and desires. And in order to avoid the conflict and the feeling that you owe them for some reason, you constantly tolerate the disrespectful behavior, hence resulting in becoming a doormat. This happens when you are unable to set your personal boundaries. So, stop being doormat because you are responsible for how you allow others to treat you.

Learn to say No and Stop pleasing others at your own cost. When it comes to your self-respect and dignity then you must not ignore your personal needs, profits and unnecessarily agree to do those things that can harm your well-being.

Using various strategies to set healthy boundaries:

There are some appropriate ways to assert boundaries and you have to follow them one by one according to hardness of the situation.

1. Informing: Firstly we need to calmly make them realize that the way they are behaving is not appropriate. 

2. Requesting: After informing we can request them to lower their voice and try to cool them down. 

3. Instructing: In case the person completely ignores our request, then we must instruct him/her to bring appropriate changes in their behavior. 

4. Warning and demanding: Even after instructing if there is no change in his/her behavior and conduct towards us, then firstly we need to warn them and then command them to change their conduct. 

5. Lastly if there is still no sign of change in behavior then leave the place to avoid further conflict.

Be tactful in some situation, as they are worth letting go, because sometimes your actions can get you into dangerous situation, which are quite difficult to handle. For example while walking down the road, someone whistles or stares you; if you are alone, then it is better to ignore it.

As it is rightly said that if you want respect then you must give respect so, respect other's boundaries, if you want others to respect your boundaries. Respecting other's boundary can help you in becoming more mature, responsible and understanding. Hence

"Discipline yourself to do what is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction."- Brain Tracy.

Source

How to Stay Calm: 17 Tips for Stressful and Frustrating Situations

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Sydney J. Harris

The stress is rising. You’re starting to feel frustrated with situation you’re in. Or angry. Or maybe sad and like you just want to pack up and go home.

But at the same time you also know that you need to keep calm.

To be able to think clearly. To not overreact, make the wrong decision or to not say the wrong thing in a moment of anger, overwhelm or confusion.

I’m sure you – just like me – have been in situations like these many times.

So this week I’d like to share 17 habits and strategies that have helped me to keep calm and to keep moving forward.



1. Just breathe.

This is pretty much always step one for me.

Just take a few deep breaths and focus fully on them to calm down a bit. If you have the time in the situation you’re in then I recommend sitting down for 1-2 minutes to do this. Only focus on the air slowly going and out and nothing else.

2. Then think of the consequences.

If you’re in a situation where you need to reply to what someone just said then follow up your few deep breaths with thinking about the consequences if you reply with overly tough words or if you back down instead of calmly standing your ground.

If you have an email or a phone message you need to reply to then consider taking more time to cool down – anywhere between 10 minutes to the next day – to get yourself into the right headspace before you reply.

3. Remember: It’s not always about you.

If someone attacks you with harsh words in a conversation or via email or phone then remind yourself that this may not even be about you.

He might be going overboard or overreacting because he’s having a bad day with a sick child or just a lot of things going wrong. Or she may lash out because she’s unhappy with her job, marriage or haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while.

This reminder helps me to not take everything so personally and to think for a minute and calm down instead of being reactive and escalating the situation.

4. Take it just one small – or tiny – step at a time.

If you feel overwhelmed and stressed out then don’t make the classic mistake of thinking you have to do everything at once to solve this situation.

Just focus on making a start. On one small step or even just a tiny one you can take to move forward.

I find that when I approach a situation like this then I rarely get stuck in analysis paralysis and my mind calms down when I know I only have to do one small thing at a time.

5. Question your perspective.

If you feel that you’re starting to get really frustrated, angry or sad about a situation then question your perspective before it goes any further.

Ask yourself:
How would I think and feel it if I were in his or her shoes? This one can help you to go from negative emotions to empathy and understanding. And that tends to help to both calm down and to find a solution for the both of you.
Will this matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks? This one grounds me and helps me to stop sweating all the small stuff and to not make mountains out molehills in everyday life. And it helps me to once again focus my time and energy on what truly matters in my life.

6. What would someone else do?

Another way to change your perspective in a tough situation is to get outside of your own head a bit.

Do that by asking yourself: what would X do in this situation?

Some good people or characters that you could use for the X and this question are:
Winnie the Pooh.
Mom or dad.
Your calm and wise friend.

Find a person in your life or someone from a book, movie etc. that you truly like and ask yourself what he or she would do to find a new perspective.

7. Cycle fully focused work with 100% rest.

This could be a solution if you’re stressed today.

But it is more importantly a long term solution to reduce stress levels and to consistently put yourself in a better headspace to handle the inevitable setbacks and crises that will happen at work.

You need to clear boundaries for this to work though.

Here are three such boundaries I use in my own life.
A start time and stop time for my work day. And that’s 8 o clock in the morning and 7 o clock in the evening.
A break every 45 minutes. Usually, after about 45 minutes of work I take a 10-15 minute break. If I have trouble with following that guideline and work too much then I use the alarm function on my smart phone to stick to my work/rest cycle.
No work on weekends. I stay away from the work computer except for doing one quick check of my inbox. And I only reply to emails there that are urgent. The rest can wait until Monday. If you use a work phone then leave it at your job. Or at least keep it off and only check the messages 1-2 times per weekend.

8. Remember to keep things extremely simple.

Here’s a reminder that I’ve used more time than I can count: “Keep things extremely simple”.

It used to be at the top of my white board for over a year to remind me to not overcomplicate and to think of situations and solutions in the simplest way I could. Overthinking is a big contributor to stress and to spending too much time and energy on things that aren’t really that complicated.

I quite often sandwich this reminder between first focusing on my breathing and then following it up with focusing on one small or tiny step forward.

9. Ask instead of guessing.

Trying to mindread someone can quickly amplify stress and frustration. Because it’s pretty much impossible to do.

Plus, it can easily lead to a much worse scenario in your mind than what is actually going on in the other person’s head.

So communicate and ask what you want to ask.

10. Be 10 minutes early.

Not much help when you’re already in stressful situation. But a good reminder for tomorrow and next week.

Plan a bit ahead so that you can – as often as possible – let transportation time between meetings and destinations during your day become a small window where you can fully relax and rejuvenate so that you’ll be able to do fully focused work or be truly engaged when you arrive.

11. Reduce your to-do list.

A big or seemingly endless to-do list can cause a ton of overwhelm and stress.

To calm down simply ask yourself: what would I work on if I only had 2 hours for work today?

Then work on that task one step at a time.

This one helps me to quickly find my focus and to get started with doing one of truly most important things when I’m stressed. And it helps me to be selective with what I put on my to-do list for the day and week in the first place.

12. Go for a 5-15 minute laugh break.

When you feel overwhelmed and it’s hard to think then you can take this somewhat odd but effective kind of break.

For maybe 5-15 minutes focus on having fun, smiling and laughing.

Laughing and finding some fun breaks stress and tension. It helps your mind to relax.

You can do this by just spending a bit of time with someone at work, in school or at home that you know you’ll have fun with.

But I also recommend having a small mental or physical folder of things that you know will make you laugh.

For me it’s for example episodes of the Simpsons or comics by The Oatmeal and Jim Benton.

After that break you can return to your work or the situation that you’re trying to figure out with a lighter mind.

13. Take some time for yourself in nature.

A more conventional alternative to laugh breaks is to take a break where you go out in nature and spend some time in silence there to recharge yourself.

I usually take these breaks by going out for a slow walk in our nearby forest where I take in all the sounds, sights and smells for a little while.

14. Ask for help.

You don’t always have to go it alone in these situations. You can ask a friend, family member or even someone you may not know that well for a bit of help.

You might not always get it but you may be surprised at how helpful people can be if you just ask.

15. Just take care of today.

It’s hard to keep calm if you look at all the things you may have to get to done to solve a situation or to overcome a challenge.

That’s why I’ve already shared a few tips that help you to concentrate on a much smaller part of the situation. Such as when you focus on just one small or tiny step or when you ask yourself the question about what you’d work on if you only had 2 hours for work today.

Here’s another one of those tips and habits that help me.

What you do is simply to tell yourself: just take care of today.

Concentrate only on that. Forget about all the tomorrows for now. Narrow your focus and take care of only today.

Tomorrow will come in time and you can take care of it then.

16. Had a setback? Then be your own best friend.

Don’t let a temporary setback drag you down into a thought spiral of defeatism and negativity.

Instead, ask yourself this to keep going on a healthier track even if you don’t feel so good at the moment:

How would my best friend or my parent support me and help me in this situation?

Then do things and talk to yourself like he or she would.

17. Listen to yourself.

If you feel you’re having more trouble than usual with staying calm in several situations and you’re really frustrated in general and drained of energy then listen to yourself.

Step back before you run right into a brick wall and do or say something you really wouldn’t usually do.

Schedule more time to just take care of yourself.

Spend one evening – or a few – in bed and just watch your favorite TV-shows or movies. Take a trip over the weekend and just focus on relaxing and doing what you think is fun or fulfilling. Spend more time out in nature for a few days or a week.

Plus-You Can Now Join Our FREE Mastering Success Facebook Community at www.masteringsuccess.group

Source

How to Stay Calm: 17 Tips for Stressful and Frustrating Situations

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Sydney J. Harris

The stress is rising. You’re starting to feel frustrated with situation you’re in. Or angry. Or maybe sad and like you just want to pack up and go home.

But at the same time you also know that you need to keep calm.

To be able to think clearly. To not overreact, make the wrong decision or to not say the wrong thing in a moment of anger, overwhelm or confusion.

I’m sure you – just like me – have been in situations like these many times.

So this week I’d like to share 17 habits and strategies that have helped me to keep calm and to keep moving forward.


1. Just breathe.

This is pretty much always step one for me.

Just take a few deep breaths and focus fully on them to calm down a bit. If you have the time in the situation you’re in then I recommend sitting down for 1-2 minutes to do this. Only focus on the air slowly going and out and nothing else.

2. Then think of the consequences.

If you’re in a situation where you need to reply to what someone just said then follow up your few deep breaths with thinking about the consequences if you reply with overly tough words or if you back down instead of calmly standing your ground.

If you have an email or a phone message you need to reply to then consider taking more time to cool down – anywhere between 10 minutes to the next day – to get yourself into the right headspace before you reply.

3. Remember: It’s not always about you.

If someone attacks you with harsh words in a conversation or via email or phone then remind yourself that this may not even be about you.

He might be going overboard or overreacting because he’s having a bad day with a sick child or just a lot of things going wrong. Or she may lash out because she’s unhappy with her job, marriage or haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while.

This reminder helps me to not take everything so personally and to think for a minute and calm down instead of being reactive and escalating the situation.

4. Take it just one small – or tiny – step at a time.

If you feel overwhelmed and stressed out then don’t make the classic mistake of thinking you have to do everything at once to solve this situation.

Just focus on making a start. On one small step or even just a tiny one you can take to move forward.

I find that when I approach a situation like this then I rarely get stuck in analysis paralysis and my mind calms down when I know I only have to do one small thing at a time.

5. Question your perspective.

If you feel that you’re starting to get really frustrated, angry or sad about a situation then question your perspective before it goes any further.

Ask yourself:
How would I think and feel it if I were in his or her shoes? This one can help you to go from negative emotions to empathy and understanding. And that tends to help to both calm down and to find a solution for the both of you.
Will this matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks? This one grounds me and helps me to stop sweating all the small stuff and to not make mountains out molehills in everyday life. And it helps me to once again focus my time and energy on what truly matters in my life.

6. What would someone else do?

Another way to change your perspective in a tough situation is to get outside of your own head a bit.

Do that by asking yourself: what would X do in this situation?

Some good people or characters that you could use for the X and this question are:
Winnie the Pooh.
Mom or dad.
Your calm and wise friend.

Find a person in your life or someone from a book, movie etc. that you truly like and ask yourself what he or she would do to find a new perspective.

7. Cycle fully focused work with 100% rest.

This could be a solution if you’re stressed today.

But it is more importantly a long term solution to reduce stress levels and to consistently put yourself in a better headspace to handle the inevitable setbacks and crises that will happen at work.

You need to clear boundaries for this to work though.

Here are three such boundaries I use in my own life.
A start time and stop time for my work day. And that’s 8 o clock in the morning and 7 o clock in the evening.
A break every 45 minutes. Usually, after about 45 minutes of work I take a 10-15 minute break. If I have trouble with following that guideline and work too much then I use the alarm function on my smart phone to stick to my work/rest cycle.
No work on weekends. I stay away from the work computer except for doing one quick check of my inbox. And I only reply to emails there that are urgent. The rest can wait until Monday. If you use a work phone then leave it at your job. Or at least keep it off and only check the messages 1-2 times per weekend.

8. Remember to keep things extremely simple.

Here’s a reminder that I’ve used more time than I can count: “Keep things extremely simple”.

It used to be at the top of my white board for over a year to remind me to not overcomplicate and to think of situations and solutions in the simplest way I could. Overthinking is a big contributor to stress and to spending too much time and energy on things that aren’t really that complicated.

I quite often sandwich this reminder between first focusing on my breathing and then following it up with focusing on one small or tiny step forward.

9. Ask instead of guessing.

Trying to mindread someone can quickly amplify stress and frustration. Because it’s pretty much impossible to do.

Plus, it can easily lead to a much worse scenario in your mind than what is actually going on in the other person’s head.

So communicate and ask what you want to ask.

10. Be 10 minutes early.

Not much help when you’re already in stressful situation. But a good reminder for tomorrow and next week.

Plan a bit ahead so that you can – as often as possible – let transportation time between meetings and destinations during your day become a small window where you can fully relax and rejuvenate so that you’ll be able to do fully focused work or be truly engaged when you arrive.

11. Reduce your to-do list.
A big or seemingly endless to-do list can cause a ton of overwhelm and stress.

To calm down simply ask yourself: what would I work on if I only had 2 hours for work today?

Then work on that task one step at a time.

This one helps me to quickly find my focus and to get started with doing one of truly most important things when I’m stressed. And it helps me to be selective with what I put on my to-do list for the day and week in the first place.

12. Go for a 5-15 minute laugh break.

When you feel overwhelmed and it’s hard to think then you can take this somewhat odd but effective kind of break.

For maybe 5-15 minutes focus on having fun, smiling and laughing.

Laughing and finding some fun breaks stress and tension. It helps your mind to relax.

You can do this by just spending a bit of time with someone at work, in school or at home that you know you’ll have fun with.

But I also recommend having a small mental or physical folder of things that you know will make you laugh.

For me it’s for example episodes of the Simpsons or comics by The Oatmeal and Jim Benton.

After that break you can return to your work or the situation that you’re trying to figure out with a lighter mind.

13. Take some time for yourself in nature.

A more conventional alternative to laugh breaks is to take a break where you go out in nature and spend some time in silence there to recharge yourself.

I usually take these breaks by going out for a slow walk in our nearby forest where I take in all the sounds, sights and smells for a little while.

14. Ask for help.

You don’t always have to go it alone in these situations. You can ask a friend, family member or even someone you may not know that well for a bit of help.

You might not always get it but you may be surprised at how helpful people can be if you just ask.

15. Just take care of today.

It’s hard to keep calm if you look at all the things you may have to get to done to solve a situation or to overcome a challenge.

That’s why I’ve already shared a few tips that help you to concentrate on a much smaller part of the situation. Such as when you focus on just one small or tiny step or when you ask yourself the question about what you’d work on if you only had 2 hours for work today.

Here’s another one of those tips and habits that help me.

What you do is simply to tell yourself: just take care of today.

Concentrate only on that. Forget about all the tomorrows for now. Narrow your focus and take care of only today.

Tomorrow will come in time and you can take care of it then.

16. Had a setback? Then be your own best friend.

Don’t let a temporary setback drag you down into a thought spiral of defeatism and negativity.

Instead, ask yourself this to keep going on a healthier track even if you don’t feel so good at the moment:

How would my best friend or my parent support me and help me in this situation?

Then do things and talk to yourself like he or she would.

17. Listen to yourself.

If you feel you’re having more trouble than usual with staying calm in several situations and you’re really frustrated in general and drained of energy then listen to yourself.

Step back before you run right into a brick wall and do or say something you really wouldn’t usually do.

Schedule more time to just take care of yourself.

Spend one evening – or a few – in bed and just watch your favorite TV-shows or movies. Take a trip over the weekend and just focus on relaxing and doing what you think is fun or fulfilling. Spend more time out in nature for a few days or a week.

Plus-You Can Now Join Our FREE Mastering Success Facebook Community at www.masteringsuccess.group

Source

10 Less Stressful Ways to Get Your Daily Work Done

“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
Jose Ortega y Gasset

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle

It is early morning. You’ve had your breakfast and done your morning routine.

So you head out into your day. And in a short while you’ll sit down in school or at your job and get started with your daily work.

But how can you get that work done in a way that is less stressful, less energy consuming and simply a bit smarter?

Today I’d like to share 10 tips that have helped me with that. I hope you will find something here that will help you too to simplify and relaxify your own daily work.


Do just one thing at a time. It will help you to get your task all the way to done, to feel less stressed and confused and you’ll do a better job compared to if you multi-task things. And if you feel stressed and overwhelmed during your day then you can tell yourself this simple thing to regain focus and inner clarity again.

Keep a minimalistic workspace. It makes it easier to keep your focus and attention in the right place and to keep your thinking clear. I keep a workspace with just a small wooden desk, a chair and my laptop and a glass of water or mug of tea on that desk.

Go slow. One good way to do more focused work is to go a bit slower than you may usually do. I have also found that by just doing something at a slower pace it feels less like a mental burden and so I am less likely to procrastinate.

Eliminate. From time to time ask yourself: what one task during my day or week can I simply eliminate and not do with few or no consequences? It’s easy to just keep doing everything simply because “you should” or because you’ve always done so. So question how you go about things to free up energy and time. There is often room to at least simplify a bit through elimination.

Cycle 100% focused work with 100% full rest. This is a big one for me. By doing things this way you’ll help yourself to keep your mental sharpness and energy up for the whole day and workweek. I do this by setting my egg-timer for 30 minutes (or sometimes 15 minutes).
During those minutes I only focus on the one task at hand and it becomes easier to do so because I know that I only have to do it for this limited time period. When the egg-timer rings I leave my work for 5-15 minutes. During those minutes I focus only on resting by having a snack, taking a short walk or by relaxing with my eyes closed on the couch.

Don’t beat yourself up when things don’t go as planned. Instead, be kind to yourself and smart with your energy and ask yourself: what is one thing I can learn from this? Use what you can learn to do things better and to avoid making the same mistake in the future. It’s a better use of your time than spending it on regretting a past that you cannot change anyway.

Let emails and other online checking wait until the end of the workday. Or at least for a few hours. Don’t start your day with going through your email – if possible – because it can add a lot of stress and suck away your limited energy and attention early in the day. It can also make it hard to even find enough time for your most important tasks if you get too distracted by your inbox.

Limit your daily information input. Regularly unsubscribe to blogs, podcasts, forums and email newsletters that doesn’t add much value to your life anyway. Keep only the most helpful, funny, inspiring and best ones. This very simple thing can free up quite a bit of both time and attention during the course of a month.

Ask yourself questions every day that help you to find your focus.It’s so easy to get off track during a day. To stay on it or to get back there if you get lost use one – or both – of my own favorite questions:
What is the most important thing I can do right now? And what would I work on if I only had 2 hours for work today? If you like, write these questions down on a note and put that note where you cannot avoid seeing it during your day.

Focus mostly on the how to and not so much on the what-ifs.Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis, overthinking and in the worry and lack of self-esteem that usually comes from those destructive thoughts. Instead, focus on what you actually can do, on what action you can take to move forward.
Empower yourself by asking yourself: What is one small step I can take right now to move forward towards my goal or out of this situation?

Source

7 Key Stages to Becoming Mentally Strong

You have to get to work. You haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months. Life can sometimes be overwhelming. And it seems you can do nothing about it.

A solution does exist, though… It’s called mental strength.

7 Key Stages to Becoming Mentally Strong

Mental strength can’t be seen physically. Rather, it’s a concept. An idea that you can get through anything. You can persevere. But how do you build it? How do you turn your scared mind into a place of confidence and peace?

Here are 7 key stages to becoming mentally strong:


1. Be Consistent

To begin with, consistency is one of the keys to victory in almost any aspect of life.

You go to the gym to tone up. That’s fine and Dandy, but most people quit after two weeks. The consistency isn’t there. You won’t see the progress if you only work out when you feel like it. You have to be vigilant.

Are you working on a novel? Maybe you’re trying to learn a new language. Or, maybe you’re just trying to get through the day. If you’re consistent with growing as a person and continuously working toward your goal, you’ll eventually reach it.


2. Positivity over Anxiety

Have you ever felt guilty for feeling like you’re not getting anything done while everyone else seem to be powering through their goals? This type of guilt is what leads to self-loathing and anxious tendencies.

This is where positive thinking comes in. Positive thinking may seem like a joke, but science backs it up.

Research has shown that positive thinking is a real skill, with real consequences. Positive emotions and thoughts affect both your physical and your mental perception of the world.

It’s more than just being happy all the time – it’s about being confident and having a healthy self-esteem.

With busy schedules and our high drive to succeed, some of us experience anxiety on a daily basis. Anxiety brings emotional and physical symptoms like restlessness or irritability, insomnia, headaches, and fatigue – symptoms a lot of us accept as normal.


TO DEAL WITH THIS ANXIETY, POSITIVE THINKING CAN HELP. BUT POSITIVE THINKING ISN’T “BEING HAPPY ALL THE TIME.” RATHER, IT’S A WAY OF THINKING AND BELIEVING WHEN THINGS GO WRONG.


Psychologists say that the most effective way to eliminate your anxiety is by learning how to change your thoughts and think with more positive energy.

Challenging these negative thoughts by focusing on what is rational, the positive, the beautiful and the pleasant helps you move forward in the right direction.

Life is going to hit you with unexpected events and circumstances. If you’re going to be mentally strong, it’s important to always keep a positive spin on things.


3. Experience New Things

You have something called a “comfort zone.”

It’s the place where you feel the safest. It may be a physical space (such as your room) or a more metaphorical place (such as the state of your life). While living in the comfort zone is nice, it doesn’t do a whole lot to help you grow.

In order to grow and learn, you need to experience different things in life. Start out small.

Take a different route to work. Order something from your favorite restaurant that you’ve never ordered before. Or ask that person out that you’ve always wanted to ask. You’ll be surprised at how much this can impact you in a positive way.

More importantly, these new experiences will show you that new experiences aren’t so scary, and that you can do it.

4. Evaluate Your Core Beliefs

In order to build your mental toughness, it’s important to know why you do what you do. Thinking about your core beliefs not only serves as motivation, but it also helps you establish yourself.

Who are you? What drives you? Knowing who you truly are assists you in establishing your mental toughness. It’s a lot easier to fight for your values when you actually believe in them.


5. Focus on What You Can Control

So many times, you lose focus on life. You get distracted and stressed. While getting rid of stress and distractions is impossible, there’s a strategy that can help you. When life gets to be a bit too much for you, shift your focus onto what you can control.

Many times, you get frustrated because your boss made you stay late for work. Or maybe traffic is backed up for the third time this week and you’re late for an appointment. These experiences don’t have to be frustrating.

Rather, simply admit to yourself that these situations are out of your control.

Relinquishing control to situations in which you have no control is one of the best things you can do. This step alone can vastly improve your mental toughness. Why? Because you don’t let things that you can’t control get to you.

When you focus on what you can control, you’ll find your mental strength will grow.


6. Measure Your Daily Wins

Small victories are much bigger than they may seem. In fact, daily victories can even be applied to your workplace. It’s been proven that small victories in business are some of the best ways to inspire creativity and confidence.

The power of the daily win results from the sense of progression humans rely on.

Known as the “progress principle,” the principle states that workers most value progression in their place of employment. They are more motivated to complete their tasks when they feel they’re working towards something. The same can be found in everyday life.

If you’re having a bad day, just getting out of bed may be a small win for you. If so, then treat it like one. Celebrate! Is your goal to socialize more? Just getting outside and saying “hi” to your neighbor may be your small victory.

Either way, you need small wins to feel a sense of progression. And this progression helps you build confidence, too. Naturally, more confidence will lead to better mental strength. You believe in yourself — thus, you don’t let many things bother you.


7. Reflect on Your Daily Progress

At the end of the day, look back on what you’ve done, how you did it and whether or not you reached your goal. This process of self-reflection helps you recognize both areas for improvement and your strengths.

Not only will this self-reflection show you your strengths, but you’ll also be able to see how you’ve grown. Reflecting is similar, in many ways, to measuring your daily wins.

Building your mental strength takes focus and dedication, but it’s worth it. And the best time to start building this mental strength is right now. Go out and take back your life!


Summary

Here’s a quick breakdown of this article on becoming mentally strong:
Be consistent
Positivity over anxiety
Experience new things
Evaluate your core beliefs
Focus on what you can control
Measure your daily wins
Reflect on your daily progress
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The Formula for Letting Go

One of the worst ways of spending your day is worrying about something. Whether it’s troubles with money, a fight with a loved one, feeling guilty for something, it doesn’t matter. As long as your mind fixates on worrying about a certain topic, it just ruins your entire day. You can’t focus on anything else and it eats away at you, and the only solution for that is something that’s much easier said than done: letting go.

Everyone tells you to “let it go” when you’re feeling stressed about something, but almost nobody tells you how to let it go, and it’s not easy at all. Usually you try for a few minutes and realise that, if you could, you would have a long time ago. With that in mind, my goal with this post is to explain how you can take those troubles out of your head and enjoy the rest of your day.

First, I’ll show you my formula for letting go and then I’ll explain every aspect of it. Ready? Here it goes.
Can you do anything about what’s troubling you?

Yes = Do it
No = Accept that

I know it seems overly simplistic, but it’s a clear way of remembering the mindset you must have when faced with stressful situations. Let’s dive into it and figure out all the details.
Is There Anything You Can Do?

First of all, you can see that it’s very important to analyse whether you have any control over your troubles or not, because that will determine what you can do about them. If you’re stressed about the results of your job interview, then there’s nothing you can do about it but wait. If you’re feeling guilty because you didn’t work out the entire week, you can simply go to the gym and work out right now to mitigate that.

The problem is, most of the time, we don’t care whether we have control over our problems or not. We worry and worry as if it’s going to change anything, and then feel bad because it didn’t. When you stop and think about how much you can do in this situation, it starts to make that burden lighter because you start focusing on what you can do. You turn your attention to actions instead of feelings.

Once you ask yourself that question, your mindset changes. It puts you in a more logical and analytical position, which is what you need to counter that emotionally charged mindset of worrying about money or relationships, for example. With that said and done, let’s take a look at your options.
If Your Answer Is Yes

If there is something you can do about your situation, you need to figure out what it is. This will force you to accept that you either have to take action or deal with the fact that you put yourself in that position. If you can do something but won’t, you run out of excuses to keep worrying about it.

Let’s say you have a very important exam in a week and you’re feeling stressed. Can you do something about it? Yes, you can study. Now if you decide to study, you can stop feeling guilty or stressed because you are doing your part. Since all the rest isn’t in your control, your best bet is to understand that by doing your part you are giving yourself permission to not worry about it anymore. Feelings aren’t rational and chances are you’ll still feel stressed about it, but your best chance at mitigating that feeling is trying to be rational with yourself. We like to be consistent as human beings so if you show your mind that you’ve done what you could, it’ll be much easier to accept that there’s no need to worry.

However, if you can study but won’t, then you have to deal with that decision. Feeling guilty about it won’t change anything, and you’ve made your mind. In either case you need to get to a definitive answer so you can be at peace. Here you have to accept that you chose not to take action and that’s the end of the story. Put all of this in rational terms so you don’t let your emotions take over. You could do something but you won’t? Fine, then so be it. Accept that and realise that feeling guilty or worrying won’t change the fact that you won’t take action. If you know you won’t study until the night before the test, then accept that and forget about it until the day comes. If you find you can’t forget about it, then study. Whatever you choose, the only way you’ll be at peace is by giving closure to your worries. Do it or don’t, but put an end to it in your mind.

If Your Answer Is No

Now if you can’t do anything about it, it’s a very different story. When the answer was ‘yes’ you had control over certain aspects of your situation. In this case, you most likely feel powerless. It’s one thing to choose not to act and another entirely to not be able to act.

Going back to the exam situation, let’s say you took it and feel you didn’t do well. What can you do about it? Realistically, nothing. Your teacher will grade your exam and all you can do is wait for the results.

This is stressful because you fear the consequences of not doing well on your test, but you feel powerless because it’s too late to study more and you can’t retake it. The key is to understand that there’s nothing you can do, and worrying won’t change that. Although not being in control might seem like a burden, it can actually be your ticket to freedom.

Once you realise that there’s nothing you can do and that being stressed won’t change anything, the only option is letting go. If you’re able to make your mind see the rational side of it, it’ll be easier to realise that all you can do is forget about it until the results come in.

Now I know all of this is very difficult to achieve. Like I said at the beginning: easier said than done, right? But it’s still vital that we understand how this whole ‘letting go’ process should work. In order to help you actually achieve that, let’s take a look at some strategies that might help.
Strategies To Stop Worrying

Whenever we’re worried about something, it’s because we fear the consequences. There wouldn’t be a reason to be concerned with your exams if the grades didn’t stop you from passing the classes, and money wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t need it to survive. We focus on the problems that might arise and get anxious before anything even happens.

One way of easing that pain is by doing some smart thinking on these very consequences. We have a tendency to exaggerate what would happen if things went wrong, which is one of the reasons why we worry so much. When you look back, you’ll see most of your worries never came to be and were probably much more dramatic than what could have happened. This quote (usually attributed to Mark Twain) captures that feeling pretty well:

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Challenge your mind to give you concrete reasons to worry so much about everything, and you might just realise your worries might not be justified.

Now if your worries are justified, think about how big the consequences actually are. As I’ve said above, most of our fears are blown out of proportion. The best way to deal with that is by going through what would be the worst case scenario, how you would get out of it, and what is most likely to happen.

The point here is that we always find a way out, so if you force yourself to actually go through how bad the worst case scenario would be and how you would overcome it, your mind is getting used to the idea that no matter what happens, you can turn this around. It’s also a way of showing you that the consequences are usually much smaller than we make them out to be. Didn’t get the mark you needed to pass a subject in high school? You’ll do it next year; it doesn’t matter at all in the big scheme of things. Lost your life savings in an economic crash? Of course that’s much much worse, but you know you’ll survive this. There’s always a graver situation that’s been overcome before. You know you’ll find a way no matter what happens.

Letting go is about determining whether you can do something or not, and then acting on that information. It’s also about realising that our problems are much more manageable than we tend to realise. In the end, people who are at peace and comfortable with letting go understand that 90% of what we worry about doesn’t matter in the slightest. Once we focus on what is truly important, it becomes harder and harder to care about all the small annoyances of life.

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